


nether spaces of the heart

by VerdantMoth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (kinda), Age Difference, Circus Performer Clint Barton, Deaf Clint Barton, Demon Bucky Barnes, M/M, Meant To Be, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-14 18:42:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21020453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerdantMoth/pseuds/VerdantMoth
Summary: “Is he dead?” Clint asks.“Is that not what you wanted?” Bucky frowns, because he’s never wrong about a desire.“It is,” he confirms. And then he looks small and young once more. Afraid.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Midnighter_dc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Midnighter_dc/gifts).

> for Midnighter_DC, this was gonna be just a one shot but it kept wanting to be more, so.... series it is!

It starts like this, with blood on Bucky’s hands, blood in his mouth, flesh in his teeth. It begins with Clint, small and young and  _ hurt _ curled at his feet. He doesn’t look at Bucky with horror though, which surprises him. 

“Is he dead?” Clint asks. 

His voice is much deeper than Bucky expected and he cocks his head, red eyes flashing, fangs cutting into his lip. “Is that not what you wanted?” He frowns, because he’s never wrong about a desire. 

Clint stands, legs trembling but shoulders firm. “It is,” he confirms. And then he looks  _ small _ and  _ young  _ once more. Afraid. 

Bucky licks the blood, wincing. It’s never as good once it begins to dry. “Do you,” he pauses. He’s heard of this before. Of becoming… attached, to buyers. But usually they’re long term. 

Still, something in this one speaks to a long dormant part of Bucky so he asks anyway. “Did you have other request?”

Clint looks down and Bucky closes his eyes, inhaling the debt of shame. Somehow, it’s not as pleasing as it usually is. Bucky thinks is because it’s not overplayed with pride and lust. 

Not that there isn't a background lust, but that could be his own. 

He studies this boy who called him, the sharp cheeks and sharper shoulders, the purple under his eyes, the swollen wrist and bleeding jaw. “I cannot linger if there is nothing else,” he hedges. 

Clint looks up, eyes watery. “Does it have to be cruel?” He asks just as cautiously. 

Bucky tilts his head, tongue darting into his beard. He’s never been asked this, never had to consider it. “No, I don't suppose there is any specific rule about it.”

Clint doesn’t grin, not exactly. But he steps over his brother’s shredded carcasses, careful not to look, and says “Take me far away then. So far they’ll never find me. Somewhere beautiful.”

Bucky nods. 

Clint holds a hand up, “I’m not quite finished. Take me somewhere and stay a while.”

Bucky frowns. He’s heard of this too. Of humans trying to  _ leash  _ his kind. But he tastes no deception in the air, can see no red haze about the boy. His wrist don’t burnt.

Clint’s eyes soften. “It doesn’t have to be forever. Just ‘till being alone don’t scare the piss outta me.”

This, strange request as it is, is something Bucky can grant. 

He studies Clint, in his torn spandex outfit, the cracked hearing aid dangling from his left ear. It won’t be easy, because nothing ever is, keeping him safe. 

He’s not even sure what safe means to these creatures, not anymore. 

“Tell me, Clint. Do you have any specific ideas as to where you want to go?’ Bucky asks, voice dripping with disdain and curiosity. 

Clint eyes him, wary but hopeful. “Anywhere but Indiana. I don’t ever want to go back to Indiana. 

Bucky’s eyes glow, the world bathed in red, and he says, “Oh honey. I was thinking somewhere quite a bit farther than  _ Indiana.” _


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky wasn’t lying. He really is thinking of somewhere farther than Indiana. He’s thinking of Atlantis, with its blue skies and bluer waters and inhabitants the color of gems and starlight. And then he thinks of a fairy-ring from a million lifetimes ago, forgotten and buried in the woods, where they could relax with honey wine and music and glittering wings. He thinks of the red clay state with its sweet juice fruits and its salty earth seeds and its mountains and oceans. 

Then, Bucky thinks of the stars; of the millions and billions and trillions of years and miles and lives between those beautiful, gassy orbs of light. And how cold it is, and how lonely, and he looks at Clint, who’s fallen asleep in his arms while Bucky ponders, and he thinks,  _ this child has been cold and lonely enough already. _

Besides, there’s no where out amongst the stars that would be far enough, beautiful enough for this survivor. 

He spits,  _ survivor, _ the word taste like rot in his mouth, gets caught between his teeth. Something treacherous tries to thud in his chest.

Bucky scents the air, nose twitching and tongue flicking, but there’s nothing here. Nothing about this strange boy who called Bucky without wax and flame and blood and pain, to say he is anything but human. 

Bucky traces a finger along Clint’s face, careful of the talons where nails once grew. “What are you, child of Indiana? Boy of the circus. What are you that you summon me without anything but hope; cause me chain myself before you can even ask?”

He hates this boy, this creature. 

He will die to protect him. 

Bucky dreams of a sea that taste like bitter memory, with a bank made of flesh, and a floor made of bone, but it is too gruesome for a child of the green world.

Bucky sighs, “Such frail little creatures, that a river makes you quake.”

In the end, there is only one place he can think of that is beautiful, far, and safe for Clint. So he breaks every rule he has ever learned, cuts every safety rope he has ever had.

He takes him  _ home. _

Bucky settles Clint into his own bed, sets him against a gilded frame draped in clouds and silk and evening. He waits, not nervous (he’s never nervous), but impatiently for the boy to wake. 

He wants to wake Clint, but then he thinks of the strange determination, that absolute resolve as he stepped over his brother’s broken body, and he decides Clint’s sleep is more important than his own selfish desires. 

Besides, Bucky’s head tilts, the taste of ash and blood and cruelty coating his tongue, he has things to take care of.

Things Clint should sleep through anyhow, he grins, because his teeth are too sharp for his mouth and the girl’s sister is a monster, but no more than the child summoning him to over a boy who plays them both. 

He returns, bathed in gore and skin soft, and Clint is still asleep. But his brows are all creased and his skin sweaty despite the chill. His mouth is twisted, rosey lips almost bloody- no, blood because of the teeth digging into them. 

He’s whimpering, trying not to cry or scream out. 

Bucky wakes him. 

Clint bolts up right, screaming loud and clawing as hard as he can. Bucky’s flesh rips beneath his fingers, and he frowns. 

“Calm,” he orders.

Clint shakes, begins sobbing, and he clings to Bucky, wraps his arms around Bucky’s arm and leans into him, burying his face into Bucky’s chest. “Don’t leave me,” Clint weeps. 

“I haven’t,” Bucky says quietly, confused. 

But Clint isn’t listening to him, or speaking to him, not really. He keeps saying it, rocking into Bucky’s space and Bucky?

He has no clue how to comfort the mortal. He can’t even remember the last time he tried to comfort anyone. 

Normally his enjoys watching them weep in their own guilt. Watching them drown in their own shame and greed and lust. 

It taste all wrong, the fear wafting off Clint. He’s not sure, but it almost taste pure. 

“Clint,” Bucky says gently. “Clint come with me. I’d like to show you my world.” 

Clint sniffs, wipes human griefmuck onto his sleeve. “You mean your home,” he says with only the certainty a  _ mortal _ could have.

“No,” Bucky laughs. “I mean my world. Come, Clint Barton, and see the Nether Space.”

He leads Clint out, past walls made of impossible colors, the colors of hopes and dreams, over a floor of wishstones that hum along their feet. 

“It’s beautiful,” he tells Clint.

“You humans always assume my kind live among the rot and the bilge and the fires,” Bucky grins, feral, “but have you not seen what your kind will do for something beautiful?” 

They exit onto grass that’s soft and fragrant, and dipped in jewel melt.

“The sky is purple,” Clint says in awe. “It’s, it’s every shade of purple, smeared, like glitter against a canvas.”

Bucky smiles, gleeful and childlike,”So you like it!” 

Clint eyes him, “Well, you did say it was going to be beautiful.” 

“You’ve barely stepped through the doors,” Bucky says. 

Clint shrugs, seemingly unconcerned. “I do not hear any birds,” he says after a while. “Curious, I don’t hear anything. Not breeze, or insect, or even others.”

Bucky tells him, “Very few things are alive here. It’s a beautiful world, but a very dead one.”

“So does that make you the devil?” Clint wonders.

Bucky laughs again, and tries to remember if he’s ever even laughed before Clint. “You people. Who even says the devil is real?”   
Clint frowns. “So Satan is a myth?” 

Bucky shrugs, “DIdn’t say that. But the devil is just the human bastardization of Satan. You really think Satan has enough time to meddle in the daily affairs of boring, ordinary men? ‘Oh, the devil made me do it,’ ‘Oh, the devil  _ told _ me to lie’ bah.” Bucky grins at Clint who doesn’t look afraid, not quite. 

“So people are evil all on their own then.” Clint says quietly. 

Bucky frowns, “Well, Satan certainly eggs it on. I know my kind definitely feed off wickedness. But yes, Clint,” he says almost apologetically. “I think men create evil, and blame it on others, who only use that evil like capitol.

It’s a horrible first walk through Bucky’s home, and he wants to undo it, to restart. 

He can’t, because that would mean lying to Clint, and Bucky’s got a lot of things he ain’t super proud of, done a lot of things he’d do again for the right price, but he doesn’t lie. Not ever. 

Even monsters have their own morals. 

“Come, Clint,” he says. “Let’s find you something to eat.” 

Clint immediately tells him, “I don’t eat flesh and bone.” 

Bucky frowns, “I’m aware. I would never do that. I had considered fruits and vegetables or something sweet maybe-” he cuts off when he hears laughter. “Were you,” he frowns harder. “Don’t you know better than to mock your captor?”

Clint’s eyes soften in that way only a human’s can. “Haven’t you ever heard of teasing a friend?”


	3. Chapter 3

By nature of his… occupation, Bucky has to leave Clint alone on occasion. 

He doesn’t like it. His skin crawls, and his heart beats- which is odd considering he doesn’t have one as far as he remembers- and his breath comes in short, frantic burst. 

Some of it is the fear Clint is going to be found; he’s not really supposed to bring mortals to the Nether Space. 

Most of it though, is Clint’s insane ability to find creative ways to almost kill himself. 

Bucky has come him to find the boy perched on his toes in an armchair back, the floor quickly rising liquid heat. Clint managed to stumble into a room full of venomous dogs, a room lazy with euphoric fog, and managed to hang himself from the ceiling, dangling by his ankle. 

Bucky didn’t even know he had the fog room. 

He’s drenched in revenge, sticky and fragrant, and also terrified of what he’s going to find behind the door today. 

He shouldn’t be surprised, but he is when he sees Clint stuck to the wall, framed by darts dipped in sedative, all of which have miraculously missed his skin. 

Bucky leans against the doorframe, trying to paint his face with every shade of unimpressed. 

“Sure got a lot of boobytraps for a monster,” Clint tells him sheepishly. 

“I like to know I’m safe,” Bucky sighs. Carefully, he begins in pull the darts out of his wall, avoiding the dry poison on the sharp edges. 

Clint lands at his feet in a disgraceful heap, rubbing his nose. “Ouch.”

Bucky hauls him up and drags him to their chair, settling the boy in his lap. “What did you do to your face.”

Clint’s bleeding from his forehead, one eye is swollen, and his nose needs to be reset. Again. Without warning Bucky snaps the cartilage back into place. 

“Aw, shit,” Clint winces. 

“Well?”

Clint gives him a sheepish look. “Just, maybe don’t go into your library if you liked the bust of Godzilla.”

Buck groans. He hadn’t, but it was a gift. Bucky finds himself smoothing his fingers over the bleeding wound without making a decision. He’s no healer, that’s not really in the job description. But he knows enough of the basics that it shouldn’t scar too terrible. Clint will just have to wait on the eye. Bucky doesn’t want to accidentally blind him. 

“You stink,” Clint tells him. “Like, really bad.”

Bucky frowns, sniffs himself. He smells a bit like fear, something like decay and urine. It’s not unpleasant. 

“You broke your nose,” Bucky tells him. 

“Yeah,” Clint answers. “You still reek.”

Bucky snaps his teeth at him, even as his hands smooth over his hair, down sharp cheeks, down a golden neck into the milky skin beneath his shirt. 

They’ve created a ritual, odd but necessary. Mortals aren’t designed for the Nether Space. Bucky has to make sure Clint is doing okay. He skims his hands over a strong back, around to a pale stomach littered with golden curls, pausing over sharp hips. “You aren’t eating enough,” he tells him. 

He can feel Clint’s muscles tensing, a sign the boy is angry, inexplicably. “You feed me more than they ever did.” He’s doing that thing, where he pouts and huffs, annoyed and full of bitter, delicious shame. 

“More isn’t enough. Tell me what you like and I’ll make sure you get it,” Buck says. He pats Clint’s thighs, but Clint doesn’t move off him. Bucky hisses. 

Clint settles against him, twisting until he can curl into Bucky’s chest, fingers twisting in the silken shirt. “I don’t like you leaving,” Clint whispers. 

Bucky hesitates. “I,” he can’t offer to bring a friend down. “Do you want to go home?”

He doesn’t know where home is for Clint. 

“I’m not lonely, you dummy,” Clint snorts. 

Now Bucky is confused, “Then why does my abscenes bother you?”

“It doesn’t ‘bother’ me, it worries me,” Clint informs him, words muffled against Bucky.

“I can take care of myself,” he says. 

This seems to be the wrong answer, because Clint hauls himself up and storms off to the room that’s become his. 

Bucky goes to shower, skin itchy and not with lust.

He makes quick work of cleaning himself, and dresses in linen pants before slipping into the kitchen. Clint’s food habits are odd, and Bucky hasn’t quite mastered them, but he knows Clint likes dark caffeine and pizza. 

He doesn’t actually know how to make them, so he summons them. 

It’s not technically stealing. 

He carries the goods to Clint, bypassing the locked door. Clint throws something at him. Bucky blinks it away. “Privacy,” Clint snarks. 

They’ve argued this before. 

Bucky sets the food down. “You can’t stay here forever,” he tells Clint. “Not in this room, this house.”

Clint bolts up, eyes wild and frantic. “One mishap and you’re kicking me out?”

“Multiple,” Bucky corrects, “but it’s not about kicking you out.”

Clint doesn’t hear him. “You can’t! I won’t go.”

“You don’t have much choice,” Bucky says. 

“Am I not good enough? Or is it bad enough?” Clint says. His voice is cruel but his eyes are watering. 

“I don’t even know what that means,” Bucky grouses. 

“What’s a boy gotta do to make it here?” Clint demands. “Maybe steal some things, fuck a few folks. Do I earn points if they’re married and paid? Or is this place only for the real baddies. Gotta murder some people? Attack innocents?” And that jab is clearly pointed at Bucky. 

He can’t help the red film flicking over his eyes, or the way his spine stretches. His fingers curl into claws and his fangs pierce his lips. Bone wings, draped in useless, shredded membrane claw their way out of his shoulders and Bucky slings himself at Clint. He hovers over him, world tinged bloody and claws ready to rip. “This is what it is, boy, to stay in the Nether Space. This is the price you pay for running. This isn’t hell or Hades or the underworld. There are no flames, no pitchforks, no eternal worms. But there’s a price for your freedom. Are you willing to pay it, willing to trade away your soul and become a monster?”

Clint sniffs beneath him, but he doesn’t taste like fear. Despair, loneliness maybe, but not fear. “Why’d you bring me if you were just going to kick me out then, huh?”

Bucky doesn’t have an answer; not one he’s willing to voice. 

“You know, you think it’s what you do on earth that makes you a monster. It isn’t. It’s this moment, right here,” Clint says. “Cruelty without cause, to someone who cares.”

Bucky lets his claws become fingers, retracts the red film, shortens his spine. 

“I don’t want to go,” Clint begs.

“I just want you safe,” Bucky answers. It’s wrong. So wrong. He shouldn’t be able to feel this way, this strongly. Clint should mean nothing to him. 

And yet, as the boy runs, Bucky follows. 


End file.
